If you can live with those restrictions, I would not upgrade to the full
Office 2003 suite. I did *in order to use Outlook 2003*, and Word 2003 is a
disaster! It is unstable, slow, freezes up and offers no useful advantages
for me as a freelance writer who uses Word many hours a day. On the other
hand, Outlook 2003 is the first version of that program that I have found to
have more benefits than drawbacks. It's huge and complicated, but I'm making
it my primary mail client, and may also use it as my PIM synched to an old
(non-wireless comm) Handspring palm computer if I can figure out how to move
my data from my current PIM desktop software.
Another reason to avoid Word 2003 is that there is a conflict of some kind
between Word 2003 and earlier versions of Adobe Acrobat PDF Writer. Every
time I start Word, it shows a warning message about disabling macros due to
a problem with Acrobat. The only solution seems to be spending another $200
to upgrade to the latest version of Acrobat. Nice going, Microsoft.
Stick with Office 2000, if it's working for you. I use the Outlook 2003
e-mail editor, and not once have I found any reason to use Word as the
editor. If you don't need those functions that require Outlook 2003 and
Word 2003, save yourself some headaches and save your $$$; keep using Word
2000.
Orrie
package. I would like to minimise cost and buy Outlook 2003 only and would
not want to spend on MS Office 2003 since i do not use MS Office Package at
home. It is just email and web.
